Linksys WRT1200AC v1 crashes randomly with version 23.05 and 24.10

[yantian]

Linksys WRT1200AC v1 with openwrt 23.05, later tested with 24.10, all ended up with problem persisting, which was router random crashing every half a mins or 1~3 mins.
I experienced very similar symptoms as in below URL,

OpenWRT x86 23.05, IO Freezes randomly and then recovers after plugging a USB device

I had the firstboot and the reconfiguration 3 days ago and there was no IO freeze for me since then. Neither on the ASUS TUF-AX4200 nor on the Linksys EA8300. Maybe it is too early to be 100% sure, 3 days uptime is not that much when usually I got the IO freeze in 1-2 days, but in my case it is highly likely that the package upgrade caused the issue. Right now opkg list-upgradable shows the following list: luci-theme-bootstrap - git-23.306.39416-c86c256 - git-23.338.81541-94798fc netifd - 2023-…

My symptoms are, very half to 2 or 3 mins, sometimes 5 ~ 10 mins,

• LuCI GUI session expires / freezes and need to relogin,
• PING to OpenWRT GW IP (192.168.1.1) failed
• WAN connection disconnected and reconnected successfully, so my internet connetivity was up / down randomly.
• WiFi connection (5G only, 2.4G was disabled completely due to a known bug as I had a External USB Drive plugged in to expand router storage) disconnected and reconnected.

I was guessing it is just the HW of Linksys WRT1200AC not strong enough to fight against those interferences. However, NetGear R7000 Router works perfectly when sitting in the same position exposing to the same interferences. Linksys WRT1200AC is just not a high-end router at all ? What do you think?

[Updates]: Moving Linksys WRT1200AC to other floors to avoid interference was not helpful, the problem still appeared after few hours of running. PING failed (with PC wired cable connected to WRT1200AC LAN port) randomly every 20 secs or so.

[psherman]

Have you tested with the device in its (near) default state? By that, I’m suggesting that you completely reset the device to defaults, configure and enable WiFi, and change the lan subnet if necessary. Otherwise, this should be a completely default config.

[yantian]

tried to install OEM firmware into the other partition via both LuCI GUI and sysupgrade command line following below URL, all failed. When boot from the other partition after upgrading, it becomes a brick, PING failed and device inaccessible. I strongly believe that boot loader is fine, it is the installation on the other partition was not successful, as can still use triple power off to switch back to original partition with a working firmware (openwrt 23.05). But I have no idea how to troubleshoot and further proceed to install OEM firmware on the other partition. appreciate if anyone can advice? should completely discard this route with fragile hardware ?

[OpenWrt Wiki] Linksys WRT1200AC

[psherman]

@psherman

Have you tested with the device in its (near) default state?

What about just doing this (with OpenWrt)? Does the problem still manifest if OpenWrt is essentially running a default config save for minor things like WiFi enabled?

[Pico]

@yantian

router random crashing every half a mins or 1~3 mins.

I remember posts here in the forum of a few Linksys WRT 1900/3200 or 32x devices that experienced hardware age deficits, particularly mentioned were worn out LEDs and instability of the power supply due to hardware age.
There was also a post of 1900/3200 or 32x with chip overheating issues, where a custom added fan helped.

[nrgstrd]

FWIW I have an WRT1200AC v1 running stable on 24.10.1 and previously 23.05 without issues so it should work. I've had it since 2017 and it's been running openwrt/lede ever since I bought it.

Have you tried it without USB drive attached? Maybe the USB drive is drawing too much power. I have a USB attached, but it's just a 4GB stick for it to write config backups to.